Where were you 40 years ago?

By Pat Zavoral

So, I was thinking where was I when the first man walked on the moon. It was July 20th, forty years ago today. I was working at Laketrails, and had pulled beach watch for kids that wanted to swim off of the main dock. The old dock shack was Earl Jenkin’s pride and joy. It had more nuts, bolts, wrenches, oil cans, gas cans and rope than any other place on the island. It was also the place where the life jackets were stored for the boats. The smell of oil, gas and lake water permeated a fifty foot swath around the entire building. There was an old radio that was our life line to the outside world, no internet back then, phone service was spotty and expensive; two way radios were everywhere and were used to communicate with the boat captains who brought supplies, campers, mail and bottle gas twice a week up to the islands.

This particular day was hot and still, the flies were buzzing around the sand, the water temperatures were warm enough to allow everyone to swim without screaming bloody murder. Father Bill was sitting on a chair, listening to the radio and smoking a pipe. All of a sudden he called everyone over and urged us to listen to the radio broadcast of a moon landing. We all listened to a scratchy voice from a Canadian radio station explaining what was going on and then heard Neil Armstrong’s voice utter the famous, “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind.” We could see the moon in the sky that late afternoon and some of us wondered where they were on that planet.

A couple of days later Fr. Bill posed a question at a staff meeting whether or not it was right for Americans to be spending all this money going to the moon while there were still people going to sleep hungry all over the world. Being a smart college student will some social conscience but also a practical side I suggested we probably could do both if we had the will to do it. Forty years later we still have hungry people and a space program with faulty toilets.

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I was sitting in front of my second home, the dock shack listening to the landing on the outside speaker I installed for the radio